do i have to fall asleep with roses in my hand
by Lady Shaye
Summary: When you're dreaming with a broken heart, the waking up is the hardest part. / She comes to him in his dreams.
1. wondering was she really here

A/N: Yay, a New Year's present to anyone that reads my Doctor Who stuff. If it helps, I'm planning on uploading a Vampire Diaries fic soon, to all of my other readers that don't actually care for DW (which I can't understand, how can you not love this show, it breaks your heart and puts you back together in the space of like ten seconds, EVERY TIME). Umm anyway, yeah, so, thanks for reading and I hope you like it. It's a little mushy. Um, okay, a lot mushy. I'm sorry. I'm not really in the right headspace for writing (having not slept in three days and all, and I thank my friends for that) so I really don't even know what I'm typing right now and I hope you like this anyway. Sooo. Thanks.

ALSO, I would like to recommend listening to this song or at least reading the lyrics. They are very indicative of the summary of this chapter.

ALSO ALSO, this is a three-parter as far as I have planned. The other chapters should be up soon.

Pairing: Doctor/Rose, mentions of 10.2/Rose.

Summary: When you're dreaming with a broken heart, the waking up is the hardest part. / She comes to him in his dreams.

Rating: T

Disclaimer: Nope. Not mine. Sorry.

* * *

_She takes you in with her crying eyes_

_And all at once you have to say goodbye._

-john mayer, "dreaming with a broken heart"

* * *

_"I l- I love you," she sobs, looking away, unable to face him in her confession and his enlightenment._

_"Quite right too." He sighs. "I suppose, if it's-"_

But before his failed attempt to tell her is shown heard felt _cried over_, his dream is ripped away. He's no longer on the beach, this part of the dream/memory is over and his subconscious has moved on to a new scene.

He opens his eyes to an empty field. It's a meadow, very lovely and full of blooming light pink and yellow flowers. Pink and yellow, just like his little human. (No, not little. She is was _never could be **little**_.) The sun is soft and hardly there. He can feel the warmth on his arms, but just barely. It strikes him that he's naked, just as he was when he fell asleep.

"Oh my god, you're naked," says the voice behind him that he knows so well. He turns, and there she is. Dressed in her pink jumper and tight blue jeans and dirty white sneakers and he missed her _so much_. Hard to believe it's only been three years for him, he still misses wants needs _loves_ her so much. Dreams of her every night.

"Shit," he mumbles sleepily, shoving a hand through his hair to give it something resembling order. He blinks tiredly, rambling. "Is this another sex dream? Because normally in those you don't mind if I'm naked."

Her eyes widen comically. "_Another_? You've had- you've- oh." She plops down in the grass. "I didn't know that. _Oh_. Um."

He blinks more and she comes clearer into focus. Her hair is blowing in the wind, but just barely, just enough to remind him of her on the beach, crying wishing _loving_ as she said _**goodbye**_. Her eye makeup is lighter, less thickly applied, as if she's finally realized just how beautiful she is without it. (Some of his favorite looks on her were when she stumbled into the kitchen, just woken up, unable to open her eyes without a cuppa in her hand, smiling at him with a mouth missing her usual coating or three of lipstick. Her eyes were bare and thick with sleep, and he loved her then just as much as he loves her now, or maybe it's the other way around.)

"Oh, Rassilon," he breathes, reaching for her. "Are you real?"

She takes his hand (they still fit together perfectly,**_ just like always_**) and stands up. "'Course I am, Doctor," she whispers. "What, you didn't think I'd leave you alone forever, huh? Didja? I _had_ to come back."

"But...this is a dream," he mumbles, and she smiles up at him with sunshine on her face and starlight in her eyes (_bad wolf says hello to oncoming storm_).

"Of course it's a dream," she says, "but I'm the one making it happen. I'm real, Doctor, I'm the Rose Tyler you took onto your ship after you told me to _run_. I'm the girl you never finished that sentence for on Bad Wolf Bay, and I still don't know how it ends."

He takes her in his arms and finishes that sentence, over and over and over again, between kisses to her hair and forehead and eyes and lips.

(It ends several different ways, _i love you i need you i miss you i love you i want you i love you rose tyler you're everything to me i love you_. Only one keeps repeating, the thing he never got to say, those eight letters that might just haunt him forever.)_  
_

She laughs through her tears and kisses him through his. "You believe me now?" she whispers, taking the hands he's been running over her face into hers and holding them, entwining her fingers through his.

"I don't know if I believe," he whispers, "I've had so many dreams like this...so many times. I've wanted to see you so much. This might just be my subconscious, stringing me along and fooling me again. I know this is a dream, but...I don't know if it's _real_. I just know that this might be another hallucination, but either way you're right here in front of me. I have to believe for now."

She smiles and kisses him. She tastes like peaches and smells like roses and she's warm with sunlight (just as he remembers her). "I love you," she breathes against his lips, and he closes his eyes because _he can't handle this if it's not real_, "and I'm real."

And the next thing he knows, they're tumbling in the grass and laughing and kissing and loving. Finally, they stop, and he's on top of her with his hands braced on either side of her head. "I can't believe it," he laughs. "Our first real kiss, and I'm starkers."

"Well, we've never been conventional," she giggles. "Don't you want to know how I'm here? You don't have to ask why, I hope, you should bloody well know without having to ask _why_, as I've already had said I love you."

"No, I don't," he laughs breathlessly, _still in shock that she's here, real or not_, making her laugh, too. "All right, how are you here, exactly?"

Her smiles fades a little, but she grins at him nonetheless. "You can thank Torchwood for it." Her tongue sticks out between her teeth (_his favorite smile of hers_) and he wants to kiss her again, so he does. By the time she regains enough awareness to push him away again, she's breathless and her lips are swollen beautifully. "They've got the tech to patch me through. They used the TARDIS key you gave me, and the cell phone you jiggery-pokery-ed into working, and got enough of your essence so that their machine thingy could lock onto you, never mind the universes, and now we're both here. Mentally. But it only works while you're sleeping." She grins. "I've been trying to lock onto you for months, but you hardly ever sleep. It took forever for us both to be here at the same time, so it could work!"_  
_

He kisses the tip of her nose. "Sorry. That would explain why I'm naked, though. I don't think I ever told you, but that _is_ how I sleep..."

"I gathered that," she giggles. "And it's fine, you see me complaining? I already know what you look like starkers, anyway, I've been with John."

"John is..." he's suddenly sad, suddenly breathless for a whole different reason. "The other me? The half-human me?"

Her smile disappears, vanishing without a trace. "Yeah, that's him." She looks down and traces her fingernail along his chest, creating some nameless design. He's too concentrated on her beauty laughter joy (her very _presence_ intoxicates him) to give enough brain power to figure out what she's tracing into his skin. "He died, y'know. A while back."

"Really?" He didn't know his doppelganger for very long, but still...a large part of him was in that man, more than just his hand. "I'm sorry. I know you loved him."

Rose looks up at him, showing him a smile that seems entirely too happy to be anything other than forced (he knows all her smiles, knows everything about her). "Yeah, I did, but we had a good long run together." She won't meet his eyes.

He frowns and examines her. "You, Rose Tyler, haven't aged a day," he announces. "Whaddaya mean, 'a good long run'?"

She smiles bitterly with tears in her eyes, and she's looking at him now with that heartbroken expression that just tears him apart. "I mean the Bad Wolf _changed_ me, Doctor. Didn't quite realize it for the longest time, but...well, I s'pose I'm like Jack. I've seen him in his dreams, too. He can't die, either. Or he can, but he comes back. I just...don't die. And I don't age, either."

The Doctor tilts his head at her. "You can't age?"

Rose laughs through her fingers, covers her face to wipe away a few stray tears. "Yeah. It's been a long time, y'know. I dunno how long it's been for you since you left me and John on the beach..."

"Three years," he answers, though it wasn't a question. "I'm alone now, you know."

"You shouldn't be alone," she whispers, then she continues like she never said it (so many things left unsaid between them, but he heard her this time). "It's the year 2105 for me. It's quite funny, really, I met you in, what, 2005? Yeah. So it's been a hundred years for me, give or take thanks to the TARDIS's weird time measurement thing."

His jaw...well, it certainly doesn't _drop_, he's far too physiologically superior for that, but it definitely comes just the tiniest bit unhinged from his mouth. Rose laughs slightly at the expression on his face. "The year 2105?" he repeats. "How...how are we linked across time, then? Why hasn't it waited almost a century to connect to me?"

"Because this is your present time and this is my present time. And I know that all time exists at once, I know. I can't really answer your question, I guess," she says with a small smile. "John was the tech-y one, I just stood there and pointed a gun. Well, now, that's not really true. I talked to some aliens. Became a sort of middleman for Earth, I guess. Prevented a lot of wars and death, which is good. You'll never know how many times I used the words 'Shadow Proclamation'... and it worked. Gave me and John a right good laugh, several times. But he was the one more related to the computer-y, technological stuff. I never really got that. Not even in a hundred years."

The Doctor takes her hands into his once more and rubs his thumb across the back of her hand. He knows her and this body, and it's true, she hasn't aged a day. If this is really her, if it isn't a dream or a hallucination or whatever, then...what she's saying is true. Somehow, she's immortal. "I'm so sorry."

"Don't," she snaps. "Quit apologizing, I'll not have it. You've apologized enough in your lifetime, I'll wager, and I'm not having it from you, not this time. Maybe when you actually do something wrong or stupid or mean, yeah, but not now. Not when I made the choice to become Bad Wolf. I chose it or it chose me, whichever's more correct, I dunno, but I do know that it wasn't your fault and it still isn't."

"I didn't check to make sure it had no lasting effects on you," he says, feeling the guilt rise up in him. "I should have."

"Maybe you should have," she says, "and maybe I should have suggested it, but we were too happy with our lives together. We didn't think to check. And besides, what were you gonna do? Is there some cure for immortality that I don't know about?"

He laughs through the shining in his eyes. "No, I don't suppose there is," he admits.

"Good, then. It doesn't matter. So it's not your fault. So don't bloody apologize to me, Mr. Time Lord of Guilt."

Well, he'll let it go, at least for now. She knows him and knows he'll still carry that guilt around with him until she convinces him that she truly doesn't mind, but for now...well, maybe she does mind a little, and she can't really convince him to let go of his guilt until she's let go of hers. "Besides," she says, mixing bittersweet truth in with humor like they are so prone to do, "I've got some more experience now. With death and guilt and saving worlds, your sort of things."

"Death?" he asks, uncomprehending, and then it dawns on him. "Oh. Oh, _Rose_."

"They died happy," she says, struggling to remain calm and show an exterior facade of being fine, when inside turmoil and grief are raging inside of her (and he probably knows, like he knows everything about her). "Mum and Pete went together, can you believe it. Like somethin' out of _The Notebook_. And Mickey...well, Mick, I haven't seen him since he chose to stay in your world. Haven't gotten to connect to his dreams yet, been tryin' too hard for yours. But I expect he's happy. I hope so, anyway. And that's good, I'm glad, because here in my universe, and in my time...well, he'd be dead. So this's better than the alternative. He's alive there, with you, which is so much better."

He cups her cheek in one palm and rubs his thumb underneath her eye to wipe away evidence that she's crying. "I'm so sorry, Rose."

"Stop that!" she demands. "I'll not have it from you. I want us to be laughing and smiling and happy again. I've waited a century to talk to you, Doctor, don't you ruin it by makin' me cry for the whole time!"

"I'm sorry," he repeats, this time for making her cry, and all of a sudden they're both laughing and crying helplessly, simultaneously, overjoyed and overwhelmed with each other's presence. He takes her up into his arms and he's lifting her up into the air and spinning her around like something out of a John Hughes film. "I missed you," he whispers in her ear as he lowers her to the ground but doesn't let her go. "I missed you so much."

"I missed you, too," she murmurs back. "I dreamed of you every night. John was sorta jealous."

"I'll bet," he chuckles. "You were happy with him?" he asks, suddenly serious. "He...he made you happy?"

"He did," she confirms after a slight moment of hesitation. "We were rocky at first. I was so torn up after you left, and he was, too. We were dysfunctional in the beginning. But we were good together, and we knew it. We worked past everything. I got to share so many important things with him. We were messed up for a while after we realized that I wasn't aging, but...well, we made it okay. I remembered how I'd stayed with you even though you don't really age or die or whatever in the normal way, and he...he understood that. He tried to do the same for me. And he died happy, too. I miss him sometimes."

He smiles in the soft sunlight, watching how the light frames her face. "He was a lucky man."

She looks down, shyly smiling. "I was a lucky woman. Still am, of course," she laughs, "I've got you again, at least in your dreams. Always been lucky, me. Had you, always there, always takin' up my time. Helpin' me with my homework, gettin' me that bike for Christmas, making me smile and laugh, gettin' me to say yes to the travelin', everything. Even got you now. I'm the luckiest woman alive, in all the universes."

"How did you know me?" he asks. "I mean, when I came into the dream, how did you know it was me? I've regenerated."

Rose runs her fingers through his hair. "You look younger. You act different. You don't smile quite as much. But...when I first entered into this dream, I knew it was you. It had to be you. You're the same. Darker, sadder, younger, different...doesn't matter. You're still somehow the same. My Doctor." Maybe he imagines it, but her eyes seem to flash gold in that instant (_bad wolf wants her doctor_).

"Besides," she continues, solemnly smiling with just a hint of teasing to it, "I remember you helpin' me with my homework. I remember your face, just like this, not aged hardly a day."

"Rose," he smiles. "My Rose. I never gave you all the things you deserved."

"Quit with the moping and blame," she scolds. "If you want to give me something, take me somewhere. In your dreams. Take me somewhere."

He tilts his head. "I've heard of the technology you've told me about, circa 2100 AD on Earth. But I don't quite know exactly how it works. Can't you change the background, too?"

"I can," she tells him with a smile as she presses her lips to his. "But I want to see what you'll decide."

With a smile, he kisses her again. When she opens her eyes, they're in Barcelona. With its pale yellow skies and long marble temples (quite like ancient Greece) and pretty purple people. There are wild brown and black and red and yellow (and all sorts of colors, really) noseless dogs, running around everywhere, unrestrained by leashes or collars or fences. It's a truly wild world, truly beautiful, truly quite like them.

"I never got to bring you here," he smiles at her, and she looks up at him with a smile and kisses him.

He isn't quite used to this - being loved and not being abandoned and showing his true emotions - but this is admittedly quite sentimental of him, and he doesn't mind as much as he thought he would. With Rose, it just seems right. (_The domestic approach. "With you it's not so bad."_)

She grins. "You know this is just your memory of it."

"No," he smiles, and notices absentmindedly with vague delight that now he's got clothes on, yay for dreaming him, "I made it much better for you."

And then she gets tackled by a noseless dog (that's always funny) and one of them hits him, too, and that's when he wakes up in his bed, tangled in the sheets and sweaty, utterly alone and utterly starkers, yet again.

And that's when he realizes that he's alone again, and even if she really is his Rose, she can only come to him in his dreams.

* * *

It's another month before he has the opportunity to sleep again and restfully dream. And this time, he's smart about it. He brings her flowers, like a gentleman.

She's there, smiling in the same meadow again, and, thank the universe, his dream self is wearing clothes this time (he's getting better at this). "Roses?" she grins. "You brought me roses?"

"Fell asleep with them," he says, feeling shy and a lot like his previous incarnation (Rose has a way of doing that, of making him feel younger and more emotional and less guilty again). "Don't s'pose you like roses, do you? I never asked."

She takes them into her hands and breathes in the scent deeply. "Love 'em," she murmurs. "Well, love these ones, anyway. They're lovely." Reaching down, she uses one hand to take his wrist and press his palm to her face. "I missed you," she grins. "You kinda left without notice last time, y'know. But I s'pose we can't quite control when you wake up."

"No," he sighs. "Regretfully. We should probably make plans for next time. I can go to sleep again in a month, I think."

"Sounds good," she grins, and then he kisses her because he loves it when she does that grin with her tongue between her teeth, and then she drops the roses and wraps her arms around him and runs her fingers through his hair and everything is momentarily perfect.

He still doesn't quite know if she's real, but it doesn't matter at the moment. He'll ride out the agonizing heartache eventually, but for now he's enjoying the bittersweet bliss.

* * *

A/N: So, I hope you enjoyed it. I kind of ended it on a slightly melodramatic, sad but sweet note. Which makes me sad. And also tired. Anyway, I hope you liked it, and the next chapter will be up soon. Please kindly remember to at least consider reviewing. Thank you! And thank you for reading till the end.

Happy New Year! :)


	2. can't seem to hold you like i want to

A/N: This chapter's a little all over the place, but I promise that it's important. At least, the last bit is, if nothing else. I hope you enjoy it!

* * *

_I was the one you always dreamed of_

_You were the one I tried to draw_

-john mayer, slow dancing in a burning room

* * *

(_2007_)

He is human, was always human. He's a doctor, but not _the_ doctor, whoever the hell that is that keeps running through his mind. Those two words, strung together, repeated along with two others: _Rose Tyler. _Rose Tyler and the Doctor running through his head, and the blonde girl repeated on the pages of his book. He keeps drawing her, still not knowing who she is.

He dreams of her: her face screaming at him through a television, her hair in her eyes as she cries on a beach, her hand in his as they run, her lounging about in that police box he knows so well (but doesn't know how he knows it), her tongue between her teeth as she smiles at him.

Why the hell doesn't he know how he knows her?

He dismisses it as dreams that simply don't make sense, and goes to make a cup of tea.

Later, he draws her, and doesn't understand why exactly he can't seem the get the shape of her eyes right, or the shading of her hair with his pencil. He can perfectly capture almost everything else, but her face...there's something missing.

(_He doesn't understand it till later, when he finally gets to see her again. It's her eyes. Something in them was gone. His drawings were missing her **soul**, her **brightness**, and that's what made her_ **Rose**.)

* * *

(_2104_)

She hides behind a table.

She doesn't know why Torchwood decided to keep some of the Cybermen in their storage space, but that was obviously a bad idea, as they are now tearing into the lab she is currently occupying and they are intent upon tearing everyone's consciousness out of their human body, stripping them of their emotions and humanity, and throwing what's left into the Cybermen "skeletons"...also kept in the storage space.

Whatever idiots decided that was an okay decision are going to get a slap worthy of Jackie Tyler when she gets out of this.

The thought of her mum still stings, but she doesn't have time for this. She was going to try to go see the Doctor in his dreams (this will be practically her millionth failed mission, she's been trying since everyone died and hasn't seen fruitful results yet) tonight...but wait. The container - four thick walls, a top, and a floor - are practically indestructible. She doubts that a Dalek could get through those walls, or a Cyberman for that matter.

...and with the way that those Cybermen are tearing through that thick metal door, she decides after hearing a _snapping_ sound from the door that's to her back, it might be her only chance. She scrambles up from behind the door knocked onto its side, steps over the body of a scientist that managed to stagger into the lab before dying of some fatal wound she doesn't have time to check for, and -

The scientist grabs her by the ankle with his faintly outstretched hand.

She cries out, just barely, but he shushes her with a frantic look to his eyes. She kneels down to sit beside his prone form, and sees the blood bubbling up on his lips. He's dying. His eyes are so blue, so reminiscent of her very first Doctor with his Northern accent and big ears and leather jacket and kind insults. She leans in closer, just because of that, sure that he's about to tell her something important, to call his family or send a letter or say goodbye to someone for him or -

"You haven't turned it on properly yet," he gasps, pointing as far as he can to a machine beside the container. It raises itself up to her waist when she's standing. Random switches and buttons poke out of the technology that reminds her so fondly of a TARDIS console, only shortened. "You've gotta press the purple button and pull that switch with the blue handle. Step back, close the door behind ya. The switch makes sure it locks properly, so they won't get in, and the button turns it on."

"Thank you," she says after a moment of being blank-minded by the absolutely normality of his tone in this strange deathly situation, taking his hand and pressing it into his chest with their fingers entwined. He looks old enough to be her dad (if she were the age she looked, anyway), with graying ginger hair and those bright blue eyes and thickly freckled pale skin. She recognizes him now as a scientist that has often helped her with this unsuccessful mission, though they hardly ever spoke. "Really. Thank you. You're saving my life."

He smiles. "S'alright. You don't have to thank me. You'd do the same for me."

She smiles back, a sad smile because she sees the fading light in his eyes. "Thank you, Doctor..." the words come past her lips in a choked way, for more than one reason. (She doesn't know his name. And she's said that exact sentence **_so many times_**.)

"Greene." He blinks ever so slowly, and she notices that he wears no wedding ring as their left hands clasp tighter together. He's too old to have children by now, too old to have living parents. The probability is that he's alone in this world right now. Dying without a familiar face anywhere nearby.

She'll have to do, then.

"I'm Rose Tyler. And you...you've done fantastic," she grins down at him, knowing that her grin is too fake and her eyes are too shiny but unable to change any of it, "everyone loves you, Dr. Greene, really. We were gonna throw you a party this year." She lies, she lies, she lies. But it's the best kind of lie, to ease the process of a good person dying.

"For my retirement?" his eyelids flutter. He's a little too dazed to understand that she's coming up with the best lie possible at the moment, and god her heart possibly _cracks _at his question.

"Yeah," she forces past the block in her throat. His _retirement_. Fuck it all, he was retiring at the end of the year. This just isn't**_ fair_**.

The banging sounds at the door increase, and she knows that the Cybermen are closer. Dr. Greene knows it, too. He tightens his grip on her hand, squeezing it, and lets go of her fingers. "Go," he rasps, spattering blood all over his chin, "go, save what you've got left. You've got to make sure they get shut up again before they multiply and do world domination or whatever it is that they want. I was never high-level enough to find out their priorities."

"You're saving the world," she responds after a moment of shocked silence. "But I don't want to leave you. You shouldn't be alone, all on your own when you..." she can't finish the sentence, but he doesn't let her anyway.

"Haven't you got someone at home?" he laughs, choking slightly on his own blood. "Boyfriend, husband, kid, parents? Pretty girl like you, you've got to have someone. Someone to live for. You have to live for them, all right, so let me do this."

She thinks of Mickey, gone; Pete, dead; her brother, dead; her mum, dead; Jack, gone; her human Doctor, dead. Her alien, her second Doctor: gone.

"No," she smiles brokenly, taking his hand again. "I've got no one at home."

He blinks. "Well, that's sad."

"I'm older than I look, much, much older," she replies. "Bloody alien tech will do that to you."

He blinks again and raises an eyebrow. "Well," he finally says, "bloody good I wasn't high-level enough, then, I s'pose."

Choking on a sob, she laughs. "Yeah," she agrees. "'S very good."

A smashing sound against the door makes her raise her head, and he tries as well from his still position on the ground. "Go," he pushes her as hard as he can, which isn't hard. "I've been dying long enough. You're wasting enough time on me. Go get that machine ready. Save your own life. You're young, in body if not in spirit, and you'll find someone some day."

"I've found him," she says. "He's just not here. He can never be here."

"Forbidden love," he says with a knowing nod and a small laugh. "I know that story quite well. It's a very depressing one. Now go on, get out. Go hide in your little box, it's what you have to do to save the world. Save the world from Torchwood and our mistakes. Save the world from the Cybermen."

She tilts her head, aware that her teardrops have fallen from her eyes to his face, creating a few tiny clean spots in the blood stains on his jawline. The tears stain his face and run down his chin, leaving lines of pale flesh surrounded by an ocean of reddish-brown blood, like rust. "I won't leave you, I've told you that already. I don't want to. I can't."

"Guess I'll just have to die faster, then." He takes a deep breath, and something in him seems to loosen, some part of the life in him seems to _vanish_. He won't make eye contact with her, like he knows what's happening and he doesn't want her to see him lose any more light in his eyes. "Look, there's this woman that works in office 224 on level 7. I never got to say hello to her, but she had the most lovely scarves covering her hair, every day I saw her walking to the elevator. I never got to see her hair." He looks up at the ceiling, the light fading from his eyes, somehow making them shine all the brighter. "She had such pretty eyes, though, such a nice warm brown." He turns his head in a sudden second of clarity. "Your eyes remind me of hers." He drifts back to his former position, staring at the ceiling in a daze. "Would you...would you learn her name? For me?"

"Of course." She doesn't hesitate, she's never hesitated to help the dying or the helpless or the good.

"Thank you." He takes in another deep breath, and his eyes widen as he seems to truly take the ceiling_ in_ for the first time. "Where are the stars? I majored in bloody astronomy and alien tech, I should be able to but...I can't_ see_ the _sky_. I can't..."

He relaxes, his eyes closing, the light gone from those blues so similar to her first Doctor's. She presses a fist to her mouth, holding back sobs that would surely give her away to the Cybermen, and shakily stands. Rushing over to the console-thing, she presses the proper button and pulls the right switch, standing back. The container emits a faint glow and hums warmly (quite like the TARDIS in that respect) just as she remembers from her other trips (her life didn't depend on those, though, so she hopes she's getting it right) so she darts inside and slams the door.

She has to survive, to stop the Cybermen. And if she can't...well, then, she has to try one more time to see him. Her Doctor, the only one left alive that she trusts now, the only one who might outlive her.

The container is roughly the same size as an average elevator. It is completely white and bright enough to hurt her eyes. She quickly pulls on the headphones hanging off of a shelf, presses the button that's connected to her mind and to her TARDIS key and cell phone (it will take her into the Abyss), and closes her eyes. She waits.

As expected, she doesn't connect with the Doctor. She hadn't expected it. She's tried it so many times, it'll be a miracle if they ever pick up at the same time. It's like a phone line. She can call, but unless his phone's on at the same time as hers, he won't pick up and they won't have a connection. And right now, his phone must be off. He must be awake. Bloody Time Lords never sleep.

As she takes off the headphones and opens her eyes, she is aware of a sudden horrible silence that is completely different from the silence that held her close while she waited in the Abyss (that's what she's taken to calling it) for the Doctor to pick up. The Abyss is completely white, like a movie screen without a picture to it. There's an utter silence, but, as she can control things, she can play music. She plays Glenn Miller most of the time (it reminds her that anyone can dance, and of good memories where _everybody lives_).

But today, she played nothing, only listened to the sound of nothing in the abyss.

Here, no longer in the Abyss, now just standing in the container, aware of the horrid emptiness around her, she can _hear_ the silence, and it echoes. It's awful. She has to know what's happened.

Halfway dreading and halfway hoping, she nudges the lock (your basic deadbolt, but this door has the resistance of a Mistsieron's shell, so there's nothing getting inside) open. She pushes it outward, hoping against hope that the Cybermen won't be there. And the room is empty, save for a spilled beaker on the ground (that green liquid appears to be dissolving the floor like some stereotypical scientifically-created acid) and the corpse of Dr. Greene.

She kneels beside him and lays his other hand on his chest, folding his fingers together so that he resembles something much more peaceful than the way that he died, choking on blood and giving her instructions to save the world. She takes the hem of her shirt and gently wipes his jaw, cleaning it of blood. The poor man. But he died for her, and she owes so much to him. She has to save the world for him, in his name. _And in the Doctor's, and in John's, and in Mum's and everyone else who has died in the name of others._

Standing up again, she strides out the door, a plan hatching in her mind.

* * *

The woman's name is Clare.

* * *

(_2105, three months after their first encounter_)

He wakes up in a dungeon. As far as dungeons go, this one's a little dingy, and it's grimier than he'd like - what with his outfit and all. He's face-down in the dirt, his clothes a little rumpled, his hair sticking up straight in all different directions known to alien-kind, his eyes blurry with sleep. He can't believe he slept without her visiting in his dreams...oh, wait. If this is happening, if he truly slept for as long as his Time Sense is telling him (at least a day, though his own timeline has always been a little bit blurry to him, of course) without dreaming, then he must have been unconscious. He sits up, assessing the situation, and feels the back of his head for damage, recoiling from his own touch when he feels the wound there. Drawing his fingers back, he sees the blood.

Yup, he's in trouble. If they've knocked him unconscious, and he's in the dungeon on their ship, then he is most definitely in trouble.

He straightens his bow tie and winces when he realizes how stiff his muscles are. "Well, this is disadvantageous," he announces to himself. There's no one around that he can see, anyway, but it's usually productive to talk to himself in these situations. "Now...who kidnapped me? Why am I stuck here? What do they want? Well, that's probably the destruction or domination of Earth, as usual," he rambles off to himself, "but anyway...hmm. What to do, what to do..."

At that point, he must piss off the guards, because one of them opens his cell doors and gives him a right smack across the face.

Now, keep in mind that he hasn't eaten in ages and he still feels the slightest amount weak from his day-long unconsciousness, so don't judge him in the fact that he's knocked out once more.

Obviously, this is a lighter sleep than last time, as Rose is there when he opens his eyes in the dreamscape. She calls it the Abyss, the inventive wonderful creative girl that she is. "There you are!" she grins in relief. She is transparently freaked out, bouncing with energy. "I've been trying to connect with you for ages! For the last few hours, it was like you were here, but you were too flighty...your brain wasn't staying still long enough to grasp a connection with. I had to give up a while ago."

He smiles at her faintly. "Rose, I'm in trouble," he sighs. "Again."

"Par for the course with you, mate," she teases, grinning playfully.

"Yes, I know," he sighs again, giving her a smile. "But I might need your help."

Her interest and curiosity are piqued, as well, of course, as her instinct to help him, to save him. "What can I do?" she asks quietly, excitement dampened and actions sobered.

"I'm in a ship with the Mlerion race," he describes. "I think so, anyway, that's what the guard looked like and as far as I'm aware there are no higher-level races that have enslaved the Mlerion as servants and guards. It'd be stupid, anyway, they'd overthrow their masters, they're so strong. Anyway," he continues his rambling on a slightly higher-pitched note when he begins to see Rose's signs of irritation, "it's your regular dungeon, I s'pose, all dirty unclean floors and bars and things and the lot, but I apparently haven't got my sonic screwdriver and I dunno how to get out without causing a right mess. I also dunno where the TARDIS is gone swanning off to, or maybe they've taken it, I'm not sure. I've been knocked out for annoying the Mlerions."

She smiles softly at him. "Guess it's a bit like the old days. Sounds like back in the day, when it was just us together."

"Guess it is," he concludes after a few seconds of thoughtful heavy silence, a mite sadly, and looks at her. "Help me out?"

She takes a moment to respond, lost in her memories and thoughts. "'Course, I'll do as best I can," she grins up at him, tongue stuck between her teeth, and he gives her a quick, hard, passionate kiss in a mixture of lust and gratitude. His thank-you is responded to with her lips parting to allow him access inside her mouth, and then she quickly pushes him away...mostly so they can plan, but also because he might wake up at any moment and it's very disconcerting to kiss someone one second and have them be gone from the Abyss in the next. Luckily, they can usually plan around it now, but as he's been knocked unconscious, she has no idea when he'll wake up and so their regular schedule has been thrown off.

"Okay," she says, turning from him and starting to pace. "Now..._what_ can we _do_, what _can_ we do..."

"Rose Tyler!" he says delightedly. "You're pacing! You're _pacing_!" He sounds childishly excited by this development.

"Yes, I am," she says back, turning back to him, her words said with a bit of sarcasm but mostly just responding with her own happy smile. "Musta picked it up from you. I swear, you've given me so many habits. Savin' the world's only one of them. Bein' fantastic, that's another."

He smiles at her. "That was all on your own. You were always spectacular."

"Quit being mushy on me," she dismisses him, for fear of responding in a very romantic, touchy-feely way that might cause them to forget about forming a plan and just make out until he wakes up. That would be rather unproductive and who knows where he'd be if that happened. "Shut up and help me figure out what to do. Um..."

* * *

In the end, it's quite a while before they come up with something, but she tells him to fake his own death. (Thank God for respiratory bypass systems.) And he honestly should have thought of that one on his own. He's already lost his heart to the girl, now he's losing his head, too? (Oh, who is he kidding, it's always been lost.)

After that, he's still pretty deep in unconsciousness, so they make out for a little while because - well, just _because_. Seriously.

They end up in a ballroom of his choosing, one of those grand pretty ones off of the planet Noweyn. "This planet," he whispers in her hair, "is used specifically as a romantic getaway for couples. Spas, beaches, hikes, and the like. Anything you could ever want, everything you'd need. All of that and more. Every single room in all of the hotels is a honeymoon suite. It's supposed to be quite the romantic hotspot - the sexiest place in the galaxy, or possibly even the whole universe."

"Look at you, bein' romantic," she teases into his neck. They've relaxed into a slow dance position, arms locked around each other, her head resting on his shoulder and his chin perched in her blond tresses. The marble ballroom around them is filled with couples in similar positions. The music drifting in the air is really quite remarkable, he reflects. It sounds different to each person according to what they want to hear. There's one couple in the corner doing a sexy tango.

Strangely, he hears some twenty-first century era music. "What do you hear?" he whispers in her ear.

"John Mayer," she breathes back. "Never really listened to him much when I was younger, but he's got romantic songs, so."

He smiles. "Sing," he requests in a slightly breathless murmur.

She closes her eyes and nestles further into the crook between his neck and shoulder. "Look at how we fit," she says, entwining their fingers. "You really wanna ruin that with my voice? This beauty?"

"No one here'll hear you," he dismisses it. "And I love your voice. The TARDIS used to play you over the console room while you were taking a shower and singing - "

"She did _not_!" Rose gasps. "Oh, I'm gonna hafta get her back, I'm gonna hafta - "

And then they're both silent, suddenly, because they've both remembered that Rose _can't_ get the TARDIS back. She can't hit the console or slam the door or anything, because she isn't _on_ the TARDIS anymore.

"How's Torchwood?" he asks, a bit awkwardly.

"Fine," she whispers back. "Dunno how the...exact project is goin', but it all seems well. They say they're closer." There's another moment of silence, and then she sighs and gives in to the slight tension. "Fine, I'll sing, dammit." She sighs again, feeling his lips curve into her hair. "_Can't seem to hold you like I want to, so I can feel you in my arms_," she breathes out, quietly, her voice higher but mixing well with the soft tenor in the background. John Mayer, she called him. "_Nobody's gonna come and save you, we pulled too many false alarms_..."

He interrupts her, but only because she sounds the slightest bit uncomfortable and he'd never wish that on her (unless, of course, it amused him, but enough for that later). And also, because that's the very same song playing in his head. "Rose Tyler, you have a fantastic voice. And this...this is incredible. D'you know that we're hearing the same song in our heads?" he asks, not giving her time to answer. "It's brilliant! It's so rare, that's wonderful, it's... it's amazing that we can hear the exact same song at the same time with each other. How cool is _that_?"

She smiles thinly, but it's a happy smile - she's just very aware that they're running out of time, like always. "Very cool."

"Dancing is cool," he agrees with himself. "So's your singin'."

She shoves him lightly in the shoulder. "Time for you to wake up now, Doctor, I 'spect you gotta do your dyin' act soon." Another shove, and it's enough to stir him from his sleep, but not before he hears her laughing, soft, lighthearted _love you _that he has no time to respond to (**_just like_ _before_**_._)

* * *

He wakes up and pretends he's suffocated in his sleep or the like, ends up in the morgue of the spaceship after one of the guards realizes he's not breathing and carries him into the room full of dead Mlerions (ew, gross). From there, he crawls through the thankfully-man-sized air vents, listening to the TARDIS's song inside of his head until he finds her in one of their storage rooms. They can't open her, obviously, and they must've already figured that bit out, as they've left her alone and unguarded. He slips inside and disappears before anyone's the wiser. (Lovely, the sonic screwdriver's on the console, just where he must have left it.)

On his ship, he examines the species' history. They're rather humanoid, excepting the unearthly green eyes and bubblegum pink skin, and known for their strength as well as their incredible height. The smallest of the adults range from nine feet to ten, while the tallest can be as high as fifteen feet. "My God, good thing they haven't landed on Earth," he mumbles to himself, completely unaware of the redecoration of the TARDIS and the thudding footsteps behind him, lost in his research and the data scrolling quickly by on the console screen, "they'd never get through any of the doors, poor tall kidnapper things."

"What the hell are you doin' on my ship?" he hears behind him in that unforgettable Northern accent, and he turns.

There stands a man completely torn and divided, guilty and lost, brokenhearted and pained. He was born in fire and he burned and burned until he gave it up for love. He died for love. Birthed in darkness and dead for Rose, he was the toughest, the hardest, the most soldier-like, and the most beautifully broken.

There stands the ninth him, dressed in his leather jacket with those startling blue eyes, arms crossed over his chest, taking the offensive stance as usual to prevent getting hurt (so vulnerable, he remembers, and that's part of what Rose loved about him in the beginning, and even now). "I said," the past him demands, "who are you, and what the hell are you doin' on my ship?"

* * *

A/N: Yup, so I'm pretty sure I've done decent parts on this. I hope so, anyway. That flashback to 10 drawing her was just how she's always on his mind, y'know. Rose watching that human doctor die sort of made her into a stronger, more heroic character than she already is (which is plenty hard to do, mind you, the girl's tough as nails) and also made her more determined. It's how she was able to help the Doctor a bit more, I think. Oh, and they went ballroom dancing! Now isn't that lovely? It was certainly fun to write, though a bit unexpected. I sorta forgot about it until I was about to post this, and then I remembered, oh man I have to write that bit in again. And, finally, Eleven got into the TARDIS - but is it *his* TARDIS, and why is Nine there? Don't worry, all should be revealed in the next part. Thank you, loves, and I hope you enjoyed it! Please consider leaving me a review!


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